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The Rev. Alissa Newton

Text: Matthew 28:1-10

"It’s so hard, friends, not to fall down and shake in the face of terrifying events. It is Easter morning, and we too are surrounded by scary things. We too are making our way through a world that is not turning out the way we had hoped.

So many times in the recent past I have stood here and preached about hope in the face of fear and disappointment and death... I have wondered, as the women must have that morning two thousand years ago, if the job now is simply a graveside visit, to remember what we hoped for and do our best to honor the corpse of that hope.

But this is Easter morning, friends. And God did not defeat death by avoiding it, but by dying and showing us that death is not the end."